The exciting times of Carli Lloyd

There was that girl who raced up the escalator at the Cherry Hill Mall to catch Carli Lloyd while she was Christmas shopping, starting an impromptu autograph session.

The flight attendant who announced to the whole plane there was a special guest on the ride home from Las Vegas.

Hitting Page Six of the New York Post merely for eating in a Manhattan restaurant.

What happens when you score three goals in the first 16 minutes of the Women's World Cup final with more than 25 million Americans watching?

"Night and day," the Delran High School graduate said last week of how life is different. "One extreme to the other."

When the world champion United States women's national team was honored in October at the White House, President Obama - referring to Lloyd's Wikipedia page that briefly stated post-World Cup that she was president of the United States - quipped, "I guarantee Carli knows more about being president than some of the folks running."

So the president was calling her by first name - and tweeting after the July final, "Great game @CarliLloyd!" - and using her for light political sarcasm. Previously, it was mostly devout women's soccer fans who remembered Lloyd had scored an overtime game-winner for the United States in the final of the 2008 Beijing Olympics and scored the only goals of the 2012 London Olympic final.

"I've flown under the radar for quite some time with this team," the 33-year-old Lloyd said.

The Rutgers graduate has been a big enough deal locally her whole time with the national team, although this was surely the first year Lloyd made a list of top 10 Philly-inspired Halloween outfits (by Visit Philly). She is being honored Monday as athlete of the year at the Philadelphia Sports Writers Association banquet.

Lloyd also has advertising relationships with a local cable behemoth, a major credit card company, a New Jersey-based insurance company, and a Philadelphia-based massage and facial spa chain.

She was grand marshal at Philadelphia's Thanksgiving Day parade and at the Ford Eco Boost 300 in Florida. She did a bridal runway show and got a free dress for her own fall wedding as part of the deal.

"She's very savvy business-wise," said her marketing agent, Josh Weil of William Morris Entertainment. "She wants to make sure companies get a return on investment."

And finding the right corporate fit is important to Lloyd.

"I want to be remembered as the most complete midfielder in the world," Lloyd said. "I don't want to be a pinup for beauty. I want to be respected for my play at my field."

"I probably argue that she's passed on a heck of a lot more stuff than she's accepted," Weil said.

The partnerships she chooses, Lloyd said, "they want to be long-term."

She's aware that fame at the level she's now experiencing doesn't usually last forever. "I've got to do as much as I can for the next five years," she said.

Her autograph now has more value partly because she appeals to a different market from the typical current or retired Eagles or Phillies star. That appeal has value. On local radio, the Philadelphia Auto Show was specifically promoting Lloyd's appearance Sunday afternoon to give a talk and a soccer demonstration.

Lloyd also has become more of a regular on the speaking circuit, telling the story of her career, how none of this was preordained.

Not usually emotional, Lloyd got emotional. First, she got nervous, she said. She knows all about pregame jitters, but this was different. An envelope would open, and she had no control over its contents.

It seemed to take forever, in Lloyd's mind, for the envelope to be opened, to reveal the FIFA women's world player of the year.

"I was more nervous than any World Cup final, Olympic final, my first cap," Lloyd said, the cap referring to her first appearance for the United States women's national team. "Sweaty palms. Nauseous for two days straight."

And that feeling of hearing her name announced during that ceremony Jan. 11 in Zurich, Switzerland, Lloyd said, was "like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders, when you want something that bad, and you finally get rewarded."

Based on a worldwide vote of coaches, players, and media, a South Jersey girl was the best women's soccer player on the planet.

Unofficially, from her peers and the media and anyone else paying attention, Lloyd already had the distinction of being the best after she had taken over the Women's World Cup final, after scoring game-winners in the quarterfinals and semifinals.

In Zurich, she got a photo on stage with Cristiano Ronaldo and another with Lionel Messi, the maestro of the men's game who won his fifth award as men's world player of the year. She'd wanted Messi to win, too. He's a personal favorite and soccer role model. (She also noticed the host of the awards ceremony cut her out of the selfie he took with Lloyd and Messi.)

Lloyd had met Messi in Houston last year, when he was there with Argentina's team, had gotten a couple of jerseys signed, and made small talk with him for 10 or 15 minutes. "I'll see you in Switzerland," Messi had told her then, aware of those three goals in the women's final.

Leaving Zurich, Lloyd's fiance, Brian Hollins, brought her trophy home on an earlier flight. The security staff was suspicious as Hollins put the trophy on the belt. Some of the airport staffers had watched the ceremony the night before and recognized the trophy. Only two people had won it, Lloyd and Messi. Hollins, clearly not Messi and definitely not Lloyd, had to explain himself.

Lloyd was one of Glamour magazine's 2015 women of the year. She was named American team player of the year by the U.S. Women's Sports Foundation. And espnW turned her into a cartoon superhero.

When the U.S. national team hasn't been together, Lloyd has criss-crossed the country for appearances. She feels as if half her life is spent at an airport. (She once tweeted at Philadelphia International Airport early in the morning to get the security gates open at Terminal A.)

In her downtime waiting for a flight, she said, she used to like to watch movies or TV shows on her computer. "Now I just don't have time to do that anymore," She said. "It sounds funny, but I'm dealing with agents. I've got a book a coming out in the fall, texting with [the co-author], managing all these different things."

How could she stay match fit? Tuesday, Lloyd gave a speech in Santa Barbara, Calif. She texted her 13-year coach, James Galanis, who runs the Universal Soccer Academy in Lumberton, Burlington County: "What am I doing tomorrow?"

Galanis answered: "What's around you?"

"It's very hilly."

She ran hills.

"It's gotten tricky in terms of her having less time," Galanis said. "Basically, the way we're doing it now, when she's on the road, that's when she's busting out a lot of the fitness stuff. In Santa Barbara, she found a big steep hill, about 100 yards. She ran it 20 times - 20 hard sprints up and down."

Galanis has been in charge of her workouts for all of those 13 years, since she had hit a plateau with the under-21 national team, and Galanis convinced Lloyd she could take her skills, add in layers of fitness she hadn't dreamed of, and become the best player in the world.

These days, he said, if Lloyd is on the road, she'll "go find a field - by a beach, the sand dunes. If she's in a city, I'll actually make her go to a high-rise building and run the staircases. She'll get permission of the building. She's been running 30-story buildings. It has been challenging."

In recent years, Galanis mostly left her soccer work alone and concentrated on her fitness.

"We reversed it," Galanis said. "When she comes here, we get the touches in."

Over the years, Lloyd and Galanis talked of her progress and what it would it take in phases that they gave names. Get your foot in the door. Become an established player. Become the top player in the world.

So what happens when you reach all your goals?

"You think to yourself - me as a coach - how do I continue to stimulate this amazing player?" Galanis said.

He remembers their phone conversation the night of the World Cup triumph. He was vacationing in Greece. Their routine on such calls is mock casual. His memory of her call:

He answered: "Hey, what's going on? What's been happening?"

Her response: "Not much. Just winning some World Cup."

Galanis couldn't keep up the casual routine. He'd seen the three goals.

"I told you," he said.

"Man, you predicted all this," she said.

"Let me tell you, I'm not stopping," Galanis remembers Lloyd saying. "That's what she said 15, 20 seconds into the call."

He said he was proud of her. "We didn't start this adventure to stop it here," he told her.

On that call, he remembers Lloyd actually saying, "When are we training again?"

At that point, even Galanis had to say, "Carli, you just won the World Cup. Go have fun. Celebrate. We'll talk about that in a little bit."

Although he couldn't resist also telling her she could have had five goals.

"Look, I've been telling her for a couple of years now, 'Carli, you always carve out between five and seven chances,' " Galanis said. "She's got this savviness around the box. The last three years, we've been working on her finishing like you wouldn't believe. We're talking thousands of shots a day."

So they created Phase Four to last through this Olympics and the 2019 World Cup to her planned retirement after the 2020 Olympics.

"You are among the greatest," Galanis remembers telling Lloyd after last year's World Cup. "We have five years to become the greatest. That's what we're working toward."

Lloyd talked at the espnW Women+Sports Summit about trying to be the best player of all time. She also talks of wanting to emulate Messi even closer on the field, being dangerous from any spot. Her first game of 2016 last weekend, in a friendly against Ireland, Lloyd, wearing the captain's armband, scored three goals in the first 28 minutes.

"She's playing like superwoman," former U.S. national team coach Tony DiCicco said on the telecast at halftime. "And you know what? When she's playing like that, she's unstoppable."

Looking back at these months since those 16 minutes in Vancouver, Galanis said, "I think as an individual, she's become different, too. She's really matured a lot more. She realizes the spotlight is on her. And with her team, she's become more of a leader. She's changed as well as the environment changing. She's adapting to her new way of life."

She's learned to do things like asking for a more private table in a corner of a restaurant. But you won't hear complaints. At the Cherry Hill Mall, Lloyd said she stopped at the top of the escalator and started signing her name, a little crowd forming. Her next stop at Nordstrom could wait a minute.

"I haven't changed," Lloyd said. "To everyone else, I'm way different."

mjensen@phillynews.com

@jensenoffcampus